Action-oriented creative thinking toolkit for services organizations

About this book

Intrigued by terms such as design thinking, service design and experience design? Lucy Kimbell’s Service Innovation Handbook brings together the latest academic research, and leading examples of innovative service organizations and the consultancies they work with, to outline what is involved in designing innovative services. Since first being published in late 2014 and now in its third printing, this book has found readers and users from across the business and design worlds.

Service Innovation Handbook provides a language and practical concepts to help readers start bringing these approaches into their own organizations. It’s aimed at people studying or working in contexts trying to tackle complex challenges through service innovation, who might come from backgrounds in design, user research, IT, management, policy or entrepreneurship.

Organized in eight chapters, Service Innovation Handbook includes 15 practical tools to stimulate creative approaches associated with ‘design thinking’ at the early stages of designing innovative services and 16 cases describing how different organizations have designed services.

Examples come from big firms such as Google, Microsoft, Barclays and Capita as well as start-ups, small businesses, social innovation and policy contexts. Examples include Airbnb, the Danish prison and probation service, Kaiser Permanente, churn in mobile phone customers, voter registration, high end car servicing and the Frugal Digital initiative. Each chapter combines academic research from several fields to help readers make sense of why organizations design innovative services, and what is involved in doing this.

The book helps readers understand how designing innovative services is distinct from other kinds of innovation and designing. It also outlines the key activities they can undertake at an early stage of an innovation process that support collective action when ambiguity is high, the impact of changes is significant and investment is low.

Illustrated and designed by Andrew Boag, the book makes complex ideas accessible, making it a practical resource for managers, designers, technologists and entrepreneurs.